Samson: A Tyndalston Story – Key Location Sketches

Some of the early development visdev sketches I created for Samson. I spent a considerable amount of time blocking out the entire city, with a particular focus on our central district, Southend. The 3D blockout became an important tool for aligning the team and establishing a shared understanding of the scale and scope of the game we wanted to create. It also allowed us to address questions around technical limitations, workflows, missions, and gameplay much earlier in the development process, with greater context.

Once the blockout was established, I began exploring key locations and the different spaces the player would encounter throughout the city. In this post, I’m showcasing some of the outdoor key locations that I blocked out and developed through sketching. The process was quite iterative, with certain locations going through several rounds of changes as we developed a better understanding of the district’s identity, its themes, and the infrastructure needed to support it. One significant change was the introduction of an elevated railway, which required us to rethink and substantially reshape several areas of the environment to accommodate it.